26/10/2013

‘Could
you point me towards the anchovies?’

‘No, I’m
afraid not Madam. I’ve never worked here before and I don’t know the layout of
the shop. I’ve just been left with this cage full of products and told to
get on with it. In fact I don’t even work for this supermarket. I’m working for
an agency which has sub-contracted me from another agency, by arrangement with
the supermarket, for just one shift. This is my first day, and my
only day. Yes I’m wearing black, but look more closely: this isn’t a
supermarket uniform; it’s an unmarked black jumper, frayed at the cuffs. And
these aren’t regulation shopfloor trousers, they’re old jeans. The agency told
me to wear black so I would blend in with the proper members of staff while I’m
stacking shelves. Or rather, while I appear to be stacking shelves... See these
packets of organic spelt I’m holding? I have no idea where they go. I don’t
even know what organic spelt is. This place, and most of the products and
people in it, are totally alien to me. I’ve visited this shop as a customer about
twice in five years, and I just bought a loaf of bread or a bar of
chocolate and got the hell out. Until today, that is. So no, I’m sorry, I don’t
know where the anchovies are. Maybe they've moved. An addition to the usual shopping list, yes? Following a TV chef recipe? Don't worry, you'll find them sooner or later. Whereabouts exactly, your guess is as good as mine. Or even better than mine. Because really we’re approaching this whole issue from the wrong angle, aren’t we? You seem at home here, you must come in regularly, twice a week at least. You’ve got a basket full of items already. You know where you’re going and what you’re buying. I’m standing here with this organic spelt, whatever that is, and I
should be asking you where it goes. It must be near here somewhere. Could
you direct me towards the right shelf? Just a minute out of your busy day,
please, I’ve been standing here for twenty minutes. It took ten minutes to
find the right place for the last thing, and then the shelf was full so I had
to put it back in the cage. And that’s when I picked up this organic spelt. I
want to tear it open and spray the damned stuff across the aisle. But the
supervisor won’t be pleased about that. Do you understand? I’m on a twelve hour
shift. I’m going out of my mind. As a fellow human, I’m begging you, please-’

07/10/2013

Hello,
welcome to the Dispatch Room, come on in, mind your step. Is this your first
day? OK, let me show you what we do here, don’t worry it’s not rocket science.

See
these flimsy brown cardboard envelopes, filling those four big crates with another
crate’s worth in a sort of mountain on top of them? Well, each envelope has an
address label, each label has a number, and these numbers must be matched with the
numbers stuck on these 80 or so plastic boxes along the walls. The packages
have to be thrown into the boxes - or ‘totes’, as we call them. When the boxes
are filled new ones must be started. As you can see, some of the boxes are stacked
up on top of each other. Oops, yes, as I say watch out as there’s not much
space - we have to put these extra totes down on the floor for more envelopes,
so try not to trip over them as you walk from one end of the room to the other.
We grab armfuls of envelopes from the large crates (or ‘magnums’), distribute
them, then come back and get more. But as quickly as we empty the magnums, they’ll
fill up again. See over there, that oblong container on wheels, that’s a ‘coffin’
(no, really). We use that to collect the envelopes from the room next door,
where they’re filled and labelled. Careful though, one of its wheels is knackered
so it doesn’t steer very well, but the supervisor won’t accept that excuse if
you accidentally ram his swivel chair while he’s sitting in it, believe me...

You’d
think that by now technology would’ve enabled the invention of machines to do these
endless, mindless tasks of packing, collecting and distributing, but no. We’re
cheaper, obviously. Perhaps robots would also be less adept than human drones
at navigating the cramped space and more prone to malfunction after repeatedly bumping
into each other. Besides which, they’d be more time-consuming to re-program if
sent to work in another part of the warehouse, and when they became obsolete
they’d have to be scrapped, whereas us humans will disappear all by ourselves.

There
are usually between three and six of us doing the ‘dispatch’ job in here,
collecting hundreds of packages in the coffin and emptying the contents into magnums
and totes, although this varies; at one point I counted nine of us, including
one inside a magnum lifting stuff out. Plus there are the three people standing
at benches along the wall. They have to empty every tote we’ve filled, weigh
the envelopes and put them into mail sacks which are loaded onto these metal
trolleys or ‘yorks’. When they’re full the yorks are taken outside for Royal
Mail to pick up. As you can see, these contraptions take up all the space in
the centre of the room, leaving us to shuffle along a narrow path with the yorks
on one side and the totes on the other.

It’s
not so bad, though. The fact that this room is generally seen as the best place
to work in the entire warehouse tells its own story. While we are of course
closely supervised and subjected to the same regimented breaks and performance
indicators as the rest of the department, due to the layout of the building we
are partially shielded from the concentrated, ultra-disciplinary atmosphere of
the main packing room, where people have targets of how many packages to fill
per hour and are routinely told off, like naughty schoolchildren, if they pause
in their tasks for even a few seconds. All the while a local radio station
pumps out banal pop at a volume which is either distracting or deafening
depending on whereabouts in the room you happen to be situated. The
international equivalent of our UK dispatch area is also located in the main
room, right next to the blaring stereo.

Here in the side-room at least a
self-contained soundscape is possible: an iPod can be used at a civilised
volume and conversation can be carried on alongside the work – although the fear
of surveillance still lurks in the background of every fleeting interaction or
non-work-directed gesture.

When
people are sent here for a short time from another part of the warehouse, they usually
express relief. ‘Scanning’ appears to be the worst department, where the
products are entered onto the stock system or put
aside for disposal. After spending half a day lifting boxes onto shelves in the
vast picking area, over in another building, I can confirm that the role of ‘putting
away’ is also crushingly grim and potentially injurious: the signs instructing
workers to ‘lift correctly’ are there to serve the company rather than the
employee, fulfiling its legal requirements while leaving the worker to
manoeuvre heavy loads in confined spaces and contort his body simply to get the
job done.

These departments make the packing area seem positively Utopian in
comparison. As if to underline this, a few weeks earlier a supervisor used his
farewell speech to admonish us in the packing room on our supposed slackness
and excessive sociability, which he saw as diverting our energies away from the
work we were paid to do. “When I come in here it’s like coming into someone’s
living room,” he said, in a disdainful tone. Surveying the benches surrounded
by packaging and boxes of products, and the glazed faces waiting for the signal
to leave at the end of another day of low-paid, monotonous labour, I remarked
to a co-worker that it didn’t resemble any living room I’d ever seen.

So
we walk up and down all day, like clumsy, glitchy robots, throwing these
envelopes into boxes, talking about anything to distract us from our tiredness
and boredom, remarking occasionally on an amusing name or address, apologising
as we inevitably get in each other’s way and cursing the unsticky packages
which we constantly have to re-seal as, due to a combination of the speed
required of the packing staff to exceed their targets, the no doubt cheap
materials and being thrown multiple times from one container to another, they
often gape open, exposing the products inside.

But
what are the products in these envelopes that skid under our feet and tip from overflowing
racks onto our heads? What are these things that we can never shift fast enough
and despite our best efforts keep materialising at an ever-increasing rate? Books,
that’s what; oceans of books, slapping and sloshing all around, heaving up
against the walls and streaming along the floors. Books, books, everywhere, nor
any word to read – for to browse or even ponder a jacket would be to shirk
one’s duties. The room resembles a post-literary labour camp, a sort of Fahrenheit
Minus 451 where books are all over the place, but due to some immense but
unspoken disciplinary pressure have ceased to be seen as books, and have become
empty objects passed blindly from one room to another, one hand to another. Only
when they reach the remote customers, those trustworthy citizens far beyond the
warehouse and the industrial estate, will the objects become books again.

Admittedly I have witnessed people stealing glances at pages here and there, perusals
as fleeting and furtive as our conversations, and yes - and I tell you this in
confidence – I have even indulged in this practice myself. But predictably, the
only volumes which tend to be openly inspected and discussed with the approval
of management are those titles whose subject matter is the human figure,
preferably in large, pictorial format.

Still,
if one did harbour an interest in such matters, the range of literature is astonishing.
In the course of a typical day one might spot several Penguin Classics, Heart of Darkness, a history of the
Soviet Gulags, a self-help guide to succeeding in business, several charming
children’s books and glittering celebrity autobiographies, Depression For Dummies, a spongy cookbook, a monograph on the
architecture of Milton Keynes and a landmark text of Marxist theory; all of
varying ages and editions, some out of print, some very much still in, all
bought and waiting to be delivered to eager readers.

But
this is not a secondhand bookshop, at least not in the traditionally understood
sense of that phrase. It is an online retailer, with all the logistical issues
that term implies. And of course this isn’t Amazon, either; it’s a much
smaller, grubbier operation. Nevertheless Amazon might well be the model for its
cosy public profile and not so cosy employment practices. The company sells so many items
through Amazon as to be practically a subsidiary, and must soon be ripe for
buying up by the virtual behemoth. This company is World Of Books,
and it lives up to its name. A veritable planet of reading matter passes
through the gates of this compound at the end of a grey industrial estate; and
its products are sent out to the whole of the UK and Europe, to the US, China, Australia
and everywhere inbetween by an ever-rotating population of local andglobal workers.

The
Big Bang for World Of Books was eight years ago, and it has been expanding ever
since. Throughout the recession it grew at a phenomenal rate. Its sales increased
from £2.2 million in 2009 to £19.3 million in 2012, when it was ranked 22 in a
Sunday Times list of 100 fastest-growing companies, recording annual sales
growth of 107%. During this time it has colonised neighbouring units on the
industrial estate and recruited a workforce (supplemented at intervals by
temporary agency staff, like air pumped into a fire by a pair of bellows) which
is constantly being ordered to work faster to keep up with the increasing
levels of stock and orders. Back in 2009 the company reportedly had yet to make a profit, but
going by the subsequent acceleration in trade and equally impressive array of fast
cars in the directors’ parking spaces, it would seem that this goal of profitability
has now been more than achieved.

It
would appear, then, that the founders of World Of Books have alighted upon a business
model as miraculous as a plot from a Harry Potter novel. How do they manage to
obtain such a range of products and sell them at such competitive prices, while
remaining commercially viable?

The
answer is that the company buys its stock in bulk from charities. Lorries arrive
regularly at the warehouse, their canvas sides bulging with hundreds of sacks,
and collections are also made from charities’ premises. Books are bought by the
tonne, regardless of the contents. Once unloaded, these books-as-raw-materials
are manually separated according to a computerised system which decides which titles
won’t sell and which will. The excess is tipped into huge containers in the
yard and periodically taken away to be pulped. The ratio
of books thrown away to those sold is apparently 80%-20%.

World Of Books lists its suppliers as including The British Heart
Foundation, Cancer Research UK and the RSPCA. There are signs around the place that
other well-known charities are involved too. It may be that the company’s
expansion has relied in part upon making deals with new charity suppliers. The
company makes much of its recycling role, which it claims
enables the charities to save on disposal costs. Indeed, the sign at the warehouse entrance bears the honourable motto:
“recycling books on behalf of charity”. In addition the company associates
itself with various charity events which no doubt generate good PR and maintain
an ethical brand identity.

In
reality, however, the recycling, along with the 10% of turnover given back to charities (whether this is the same as the payment-by-weight or additional to it is not clear), are not altruistic, socially responsible gestures but essential costs, necessary
for the acquisition of new raw materials which can be worked up into profitable
commodities. This cold hard capitalist reality is obvious in the warehouse
itself which, as you will have gathered, hardly buzzes with the feeling that everyone
is working together for a good cause. The charities and their projects aren’t
mentioned in the supervisor’s end-of-day speeches about productivity, or used
to justify the pitiful wages. There is no impression that this disciplinary
regime of labour is driven by a need to maximise the contribution to any cause
other than World Of Books itself.

And
what stories might be told by the truckloads of books delivered to this
literary abattoir? Obviously there will be several unwanted Clarksons to wade
through and dispose of before reaching a Bronte or a Keyes, but the sifting
process is clearly a lucrative one. The company even has a dedicated department, ‘World
Of Rare Books’, which sells older, more collectible items, some over a
hundred years old. But even by non-vintage standards, the quantity and quality of
books they obtain in this way is startling. Some titles might even conceivably
be sold, read, donated back to charities, then delivered back and sold again. School
revision guides are especially popular, for instance. Customer addresses are
often universities.

Many
books look as if they were part of personal collections built up over years,
and were not given up willingly. If a loved one died of cancer or a heart
attack, what more reassuring and respectful way of disposing of their lifelong
library than to donate it to the British Heart Foundation or Cancer Research? According
to its website, the company also has arrangements with several hospices. Are the
supporters of these charities told if their donations are destined to fund the Porsches of
World Of Books directors? Some books arrive bearing charity shop price stickers
which have to be cleaned off, so were presumably unsold locally, but whether
all the ‘surplus’ stock has seen the inside of a charity shop is debatable. Packing
staff are instructed to check books for any personal effects, such as photos,
letters or bookmarks, which might be left inside. These are removed and either
stuck up on the walls around the packing room or thrown away.

After
decades of mass production and consumption, there is a huge reservoir of books which
people don’t want to keep, or cannot take with them into the next life, and
which charities cannot accommodate or sell in their high street shops. Hence
this treasure trove, first stumbled upon by the founder of what would become World
Of Books (so the mythic origin story goes) when he was passing a local charity
shop and eyed some discarded stock. I mean, we’ve all seen some unwanted chazza
gem and thought, ‘I could sell that book/record/Dinky toy on eBay’, right? A
few of us might even have done so a few times, thinking there’s no harm in it.
But only one man, it seems, had the vision to base an entire business plan on this thought,
and the resources to implement it on an industrial scale.

Like
all good entrepreneurs, he and the other World Of Books bosses are surfing the
crest of a historical wave. Printed books no doubt seem like bloated relics to
today’s e-book downloader, and charity shops might appear to be drowning in
useless donations, but these impressions conveniently disguise the fact that if
those physical books are efficiently filtered and matched with a global network
of potential readers, they are still valuable. How much more money would these
charities make from their donations if they set up their own organisation to
perform this role, rather than outsource it to a private business, so that all the
accumulated surplus revenue, not just a small percentage of it, went to the
charities themselves?

Finally:
for those charities campaigning on issues of health promotion and disease
prevention, where, if at all, do the 200 or so World Of Books workers fit in? As
suppliers to a commercial enterprise, are these charities also happy to be the
conduit for low-paid, monotonous, stressful employment with no sick pay? Does
this constitute a healthy workplace, or one which incubates the very problems
about which these charities strive to raise awareness? After just three months I
can sense the answer to this question forming in my mind and in my bones, as I drag
the coffin around on its wonky wheels.

I often
wonder whether any of the VIP visitors who pass through the packing room on
their guided tours, scrutinising the products with barely a glance at us, are
charity representatives. Or maybe they are prospective buyers, or applicants
for senior jobs. It’s difficult to tell.